Azaryah Cohen currently serves as Director of Jewish Studies at the Frankel Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield, Michigan and is a member of their “Education Leadership Team.” He previously served as the Director of Education Leadership team overseeing new teacher induction and mentoring.
Azaryah Cohen describes the processes and challenges at his school as they began a long-term process of building a culture of professional growth. See the accompanying article by two teachers, Amira Soleimani and Peter Stein, who describe their experience as participants in this process.
A novice teacher, “a trial by fire”
Several years ago I was a novice teacher who had been asked to teach a number of new courses. This meant taking on more periods of teaching and a workload I believed was beyond my capacity to maintain an acceptable level of competency while also leaving any time for professional reflection and growth. With some apprehension I approached my supervisor to discuss my concerns. I was stunned by the reply. “It will be a trial by fire,” the supervisor responded.
My story is, in all likelihood, not unique. A substantial teaching schedule, limited prep time, even minimal support, may be the “rite of passage” or induction into the teaching profession of many new teachers. The reality is that schools have limited resources. Time, money and expertise are often in short supply. In some way this serves as a system for weeding out teachers; a natural selection process, but shouldn’t there be a better way to support new teachers – leading to better teaching and fewer teacher drop-outs?
As a new teacher, I was expected to maintain a standard of teaching and pedagogy. Never mind that I had a busy teaching schedule. I was too naïve at the time to realize that those teaching standards that I would be accountable for were never clearly defined nor was there a mentor or coach available to help guide me through the adjustments and challenges new teachers often experience.
How to think about learning and schools as learning communities?
The expectation that new teachers who are “good” will be successful and those who are not are unfit to teach, is akin to expecting students to succeed in a class without appropriate instruction and pedagogy.
Learning to teach is an ongoing process that takes time. Schools should be models for learning and growth. If we believe that people can learn and grow and we believe that there are effective techniques and appropriate environments that foster growth, then we should be consistent in how we nurture and grow all learners. We need to create a culture where schools are places of learning – for both teachers and students alike. This is the benchmark for true learning communities.
Following my “trial by fire,” I accepted a teaching position at another school – one that believed in and supported professional growth for teachers. Teachers taught fewer classes, had more prep time and had time to reflect and try new techniques in the classroom. In my fourth year at the school I was asked, with several other teacher leaders, to be part of a new professional development initiative. With complete financial and scheduling support from administration, we entered a three-year partnership with the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University.
Four of us in the school were designated as the “Induction Team,” charged with overseeing our New Teacher Induction Program. As learners ourselves, the Induction Team relied heavily on our annual summer visits to Brandeis and the guidance provided by our coach Vivian Troen, who helped focus our vision by providing a framework and routines for our work in progress.
Our overarching goal was ambitious. We wanted to develop a school culture where teachers saw themselves as part of a community of learners, where professional development was ongoing and learning was collaborative. While all teachers could benefit from a structured and routine professional development system, we understood that new teachers needed the most support.
Moving from vision to reality
In order to build a community of learners we had to develop a structure that could support learning and growth. New teachers needed mentors and a forum to discuss issues of pedagogy. At the same time, mentors needed guidance and support to help develop skills necessary for effective mentoring.
Mentors were chosen based on their leadership in the school, their classroom experience and their ability to work with others. With strategic help from our coach and guiding materials provided by the Mandel Center we established a framework and developed routines to realize our vision. New teachers and mentors met weekly; new teachers were observed bi-weekly. New Teacher and Mentor study groups were held monthly to discuss effective teaching or mentoring practices.
Besides supporting new teachers and mentors we designated a group of teacher leaders as “Critical Colleagues,” who, while not mentors, would observe each other, and collaborate, setting teaching goals and developing teaching strategies.
Confronting challenges and making adjustments
Though we had a vision for where we were going and the type of culture we wanted to develop, we often had to remind ourselves that growth and change happen slowly. It was important to keep sight of our goal of establishing a collaborative and supportive professional learning environment while making necessary adjustments and dealing with the reality of how messy school change can be.
It was necessary to include the entire faculty in our vision, since ultimately they were going to play a role in the learning community we wanted to develop. We discovered, however, that not all teachers understood what we were striving for and some teachers were concerned that they were too busy and would not have spare time to mentor or participate in the work, collaboration and learning.
I began to associate the challenges we encountered with teachers with the resistance students might present in the classroom when confronted with a new task or instruction. However, this time the school was the classroom and the teachers and mentors were the learners. I began to see teachers and mentors as students. Mentor Study Groups and New Teacher Study groups were classes. Setting appropriate goals, using effective pedagogy, creating accountability and organization were just as important for our New Teacher Induction Program as they are in the classroom.
Our Induction Team also changed over time. One member left and a new member was appointed. Individual roles changed; we sometimes felt stuck but we knew that we were learning as well. We often sought the council of our coach, Vivian, who helped focus our vision or streamline implementation of an initiative. Just as students who look to their teacher for direction, we were extremely dependant on the “outside” guidance we received from Vivian.
Changing the culture one initiative at a time
We first learned that new teacher induction began with hiring. In order to achieve the collaborative culture we envisioned, it was important to build a team of educators who were committed to collaboration and collective responsibility for each other’s growth. To ensure appropriate hires we developed a hiring protocol that delineated each step of the hiring process and who was responsible for each step.
It was also critical that if we were working towards creating a community of learners, that as a community we had to share a common language and common standards for what it means to be a professional teacher. Just as in the classroom we need to be transparent about our goals and provide our students with standards for success, it was necessary to provide the same for our teachers. We adopted the Jewish New Teacher Project’s teaching standards in order to share a common vision and language of the pedagogy we valued as a teaching and learning community. In our second year we collaborated with the entire faculty to develop a teaching standard related to student independence, a quality we value in our school and classrooms.
A paradigm shift
Once we had the structure in place to support and facilitate new teacher growth and we had established clear teaching standards we needed a system that could measure and monitor teacher growth in a way that was beneficial to and empowering for the teacher.
Many parts of this system were already in place in theory if not in practice. Formal teacher evaluation, a system by which teachers’ pedagogy and practice is assessed, is practiced in countless schools to some degree or another. Our thought was to take teacher evaluation and turn it into something that could help foster and facilitate teacher growth rather than serve as an infrequent appraisal of a teacher’s practice. For our plan to work we knew we needed to shift the emphasis of evaluation from a yearly checkup of a teachers proficiency to one of strengthening and growth. We began with the name. Rather than calling it “teacher evaluation” (which places even more stress on teachers since it connotes an evaluation of the teacher rather than his teaching practice), we called it “Supervision For Growth.”
In order for Supervision For Growth to work we had to make sure that we could take the evaluation process and turn it into a cycle that would emphasize teacher growth. Teachers needed opportunities to set professional teaching goals. Once they identified an area they wanted to focus on they would need to conference and strategize how to achieve the goals and develop an implementation strategy. Only then would teachers be observed. A post-observation conference would give the teacher and the supervisor the opportunity to determine if the teacher had achieved his goal and whether his implementation was effective. The cycle would then begin again with the teacher either setting a new goal or developing a different strategy or implementation plan.
This cycle would empower teachers by giving teachers the opportunity to set their own goals in collaboration with their supervisor, implement strategies to achieve those goals, analyze their teaching (using artifacts) to see if they achieved their goals, then set new goals or develop new strategies.
With Supervision For Growth the teacher became the student and the goal was to develop mastery. The system of Supervision For Growth used in conjunction with standards helped move teachers toward mastery in various areas of pedagogy and professional practice.
Other components of Supervision For Growth included brief instructional “walk-throughs,” student perception surveys and “teacher centered conferences” (a meeting with mentor, mentee and supervisor emphasizing a new teacher’s recent achievements and new goals). Each component of Supervision For Growth had to work toward achieving our goal of creating a culture of professional learners.
The Supervision For Growth initiative wasn’t just for new teachers. While we had started by focusing on new teachers, since our goal was to affect a cultural change school wide we had begun to think about the greater school culture. We developed a new initiative, Peer Coaching, modeled after the New Teacher Induction program we had started with. Each faculty member was paired with a peer with who they would set professional goals, conference and observe. This opened up wonderful opportunities for collaboration, deep discussion about effective teaching practice and mutual support. Like the New Teacher Study Groups that supported the work and growth of new teachers or the Mentor Study Groups that supported the work and growth of mentors we began Peer-Coaching Study Groups to support the work and growth of the peers.
Teaching and learning collaboratively requires courage and trust
It is a challenge for teachers to open up their classrooms, collaborate with each other and discuss practice. It takes trust, as well as courage to be open to critique, even when constructive and carefully crafted, and it takes humility to admit and realize that we don’t have a solution or strategy for every challenge a teacher encounters. As a team, we try to be sensitive to this and as often as we have the opportunity, we emphasize that we are all learning; that we are a community of learners and that we are on a journey together that involves constant learning, adjustment and growth. This can be liberating and empowering for the school community, allowing us to be candid about what we don’t know and empowering us to ask questions and collaborate. We also emphasize the value of transparency. With each initiative we introduce (like the components of Supervision For Growth) or any workshop we run, we strive to be clear and transparent about what we were doing and what we hope to accomplish; at the forefront of our mind is our vision to develop a collaborative community for professional learning and growth.
A collaborative learning community takes shape
All of these initiatives, establishing a structure for effective mentoring, developing a hiring protocol, Supervision For Growth and Peer Coaching, took time in planning and implementation. We are moving into our fifth year since beginning this journey and the benefits of our efforts are manifested by the strength of our new teachers and their courage to take risks in the classroom. Our mentors have become expert collaborators and faculty discussion about best teaching practices is commonplace.
We have come a long way but we understand there is much left to accomplish. Like the students who are here to learn or their teachers who are constantly reflecting on their teaching and making adjustments, schools must see themselves as places where the learning never ends. Exploring effective practice and collaboration should not be confined to classrooms, but should extend inward, from school leadership and administration, to teachers and teacher leaders, setting an example for students of what it means to be lifelong learners.
Teaching and learning collaboratively requires courage and trust
It is a challenge for teachers to open up their classrooms, collaborate with each other and discuss practice. It takes trust, as well as courage to be open to critique, even when constructive and carefully crafted, and it takes humility to admit and realize that we don’t have a solution or strategy for every challenge a teacher encounters. As a team, we try to be sensitive to this and as often as we have the opportunity, we emphasize that we are all learning; that we are a community of learners and that we are on a journey together that involves constant learning, adjustment and growth. This can be liberating and empowering for the school community, allowing us to be candid about what we don’t know and empowering us to ask questions and collaborate. We also emphasize the value of transparency. With each initiative we introduce (like the components of Supervision For Growth) or any workshop we run, we strive to be clear and transparent about what we were doing and what we hope to accomplish; at the forefront of our mind is our vision to develop a collaborative community for professional learning and growth.
A collaborative learning community takes shape
All of these initiatives, establishing a structure for effective mentoring, developing a hiring protocol, Supervision For Growth and Peer Coaching, took time in planning and implementation. We are moving into our fifth year since beginning this journey and the benefits of our efforts are manifested by the strength of our new teachers and their courage to take risks in the classroom. Our mentors have become expert collaborators and faculty discussion about best teaching practices is commonplace.
We have come a long way but we understand there is much left to accomplish. Like the students who are here to learn or their teachers who are constantly reflecting on their teaching and making adjustments, schools must see themselves as places where the learning never ends. Exploring effective practice and collaboration should not be confined to classrooms, but should extend inward, from school leadership and administration, to teachers and teacher leaders, setting an example for students of what it means to be lifelong learners.